What's in my Closet?

The Beginning has an End

Chapter One

It didn't make sense, I didn't have clue, on my rooftop I stood with my arms raised above my head. The wind was grabbing my hair and snapping it back and forth chilling my neck, unaware of anything.

"Get that child off the roof!" a man from below shouted. There were sirens and fire trucks, Jaws of life, the whole works had shown up for something that was out of their control. This was the beginning, the start, and it wasn't my fault.

"Alice! Alice!!" my mother called in panic from her apartment window, her eyes wide with confusion and worry. I only heard the echo of silence ringing throughout my head, the state of sleep I was in gave me no clues to what was happening.

Then, something cool at my feet reached my senses. Water, the eavesdrops, I was awake, and also looking down. "What–..." "Stay were you are!" I had heard an authorized sounding voice call to me. A wave of fear ran over me, finally realizing I was on the edge of a roof, my bedroom window a floor below her. I screamed backing up a few steps, sitting myself down sprawling out on the damp shingles.

The fireman had already entered the building, quickly making themselves up to the top floor. My mom was constantly screaming out to me, desperately wanting a response, I was too panicked even to make eye contact.

I didn't notice the fireman that had grabbed me and hauled me into a window. All I remembered was my mother latched onto me with a death grip of hers, scolding me of all things, never to do anything like that again. "You hear me young lady?! Never again do something so reckless!" she hugged me and it seemed like hours before she had let go.

Losing half a night's sleep, I was immediately signed up for therapy that morning.. "Sleepwalking can be triggered by many events, we are going to process your brain to find out what you were doing the day, week, or month before." The therapist intelligently told my mother. At that point, a lot can run through a seven-year's brain wondering if your going to be hypnotised.

They were stumped, I was a normal little girl, with friends at school, a happy household and family living down the street. No traumatic experiences, no heart loss, no upsetting deaths. It was a fluke. Not even the fact of me not having a father effected me. I wish maybe I was disturbed, because it was something worse.

Maybe a month later, strange things were happening...

Looking in my closet door, I calmly layed in my bed eyeing the glow- in- the- dark stick on stars and moons. My room was covered in stuffed animals, children's story books and the walls were painted a light pink color. Clothes were randomly scattered on the floor, and dolls had spots on my dresser. Just the way I liked my room.

I sighed thinking about grade five the next day, how jealous I was of that girl with the pink flowy skirt I wanted so bad. How the boy with the missing tooth that sat next to me was always poking at my shoulder. My mind was wandering, slowly falling asleep unable to keep my eyes open.

I should have fallen asleep, it shouldn't have happened, the frightening scene that took place in my innocent room that night. The thing I happened to forget all those years. One of those things that are never gone, but in the end they always come back scraping the inside of your skull, calling to you, "Psst! I'm here you know! You forgot about me but I'm still here!"

That tapping noise, it was so quiet, but it bugged me, I was the kind of kid that if there was a faucet dripping downstairs, I would take the effort to limp down the stairs and tighten the tap. Or if there was a light on in the basement, I would think about it to the point where it drove me crazy until I got up and went downstairs to turn it off myself.

It got louder, and louder, and it started to echo through my ears. I was never scared to investigate so what do you think I did? I pulled my covers off and slid myself out of my bed.( I'm glad I went through the trouble of turning my light on or else I don't know what else I would have done.)

My closet door was open a crack, it was pitch black inside, but the tapping sound filled my room. That's where it was coming from. I slowly reached out to grab the knob and I pulled the door open. At that second the tapping noise had stopped and I was confused. The closet was filled with clothing and books, the floor had puzzle magazines covering up the white rug , but in the corner there was a dark oozy substance soaking the pages. I had figured out it was fruit juice when on the top self a spilt glass layed on it's side. I set it upright and closed the door and turned around...

"KkcCrrrRRReEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!" It cried loudly in my face, the most horrible thing you could ever see looking back at you. All I saw before I screamed was red eyes and jagged rotting teeth and smell of dead skin. My eyes were going to fall out, I was on the floor, I had stepped backwards and tipped over a doll.

My mom was in my room within seconds to find her hysterical daughter screaming on the floor with her hands over her eyes. She shook me gently by the shoulders calling my name, "Alice..Alice, ALICE!" I snapped my eyes open to look into hers. She had a twisted expression on her face but she managed a small smile. I thought her face was going to shatter into a million peices, if I would have ever thought my mom looked middle-aged, it was at that moment.

"It was here, in my room, it came from my closet! Didn't you hear it? It made a screeching sound!" Panicked, I clung to my mom and sobbed into her stomach until she gently said, "Honey, you were just having a horrible nightmare, there's nothing here." I looked up at her, untrusting her words. "Didn't you hear it? Doesn't the room smell like something dead?" She shook her head. I was a demented child.

I slept that night in her room that night, in her cozy queen sized bed. I slept pretty well considering I just went through the nitemare of my life. Or was it really a nitemare? Lets call it my dramatic experience, that I happen to have forgotten for the time being.

That wasn't the end of my "unusual experiences" stage. I sat in class the next day, and a man outside the window was peering in, smiling at me. He waved in a friendly way and I waved back. The teacher eyed me strangely as well as my classmates.

"Alice, who are you waving to?" she said stopping her discussion. I looked away from the window and I thought it seemed obvious. "The man standing outside the window." Her classmates giggled, some making sure there wasn't actually a man in the window.

He continued to wave at me, with a lonely smile his eyes understanding. I almost lifted my hand to wave back, but I restrained myself so I wouldn't have to go through more giggles. He frowned, not in anger but in disappointment. I quickly looked from the chalkboard, to the window. The weird thing was, he wasn't there when I looked back.

Soon I started seeing random people, in closed stores and around abandoned building. By our town's air cadet museum I would see people dressed up in uniforms.. I always pointed them out, and everyone always denied them being there. At one point I thought they were denying it to drive me crazy. "There's no one inside there...""That's been abandoned for years! There's nothing worth anything there!" "The museum is a park, there's employees dressed up as cadets, it only has a caretaker and a manager."

I would just stop telling people I saw them. They were everywhere, like regular people. Some of them had a lot of cuts and scars, bruises and black eyes. They all seemed to stare at me, only me. Because only I could see them. I even saw ones that were bleeding. Those ones I did tell others about. It only made them think I was crazier and crazier each time. "You think it's funny to tell me your seeing invisible people that are bleeding to death?" That's when I realized I was seeing...

I was nervous to drive by cemeteries, there appearances where getting worse and worse. It's like they've upgraded me to seeing more extreme gore, more people that look as if they should be in a hospital bed, not wandering around an old cemetery. I couldn't look in mirrors, a reflected light would always block out part of my face, the funny thing was that I couldn't ever find where it was coming from.

My mom was getting worried. My auntie was telling her things. My aunt had lived down the street, and I would go there when my mom had longer working shifts. We went for a walk that autumn, I could remember me with my pink scarf, excited about all the leaves falling off the trees.

On the sidewalk, I saw a man dressed in a long brown trench coat, with a matching old hat. The kind you would see in one of those old 1930's movies. He lifted his hat for a greeting giving me a polite smile. A honey colored dog walked by his side and I had noticed it didn't have a leash.

The man walked past us, and the dog followed close to his side. "That man's dog didn't have a leash, aren't owners suppose to have leashes?" I asked her. She looked at me weird and glanced behind her back at the dog. "Sweetie, I only saw a dog, there was no man." I shook my head. "The dog was walking right by the man, and he smiled at me and lifted his hat." I explained to her, desperately hoping I didn't see another dead person. She didn't say a word after that, and neither did I. Now my aunt thought I was crazy.

Never did they ever bother me at home though, not until the end of winter. I was expecting it. I slept with my light on and my head under the covers. I even asked my mom for earplugs. She asked me why and I told her because the faucet downstairs drips and I couldn't sleep. She bought them for me and they did help me sleep better.

One night I slept without them. The nine year old I was, I even thought it was stupid. Apparently it wasn't. I could hear them talking. A man and a woman, and it wasn't my mother . I didn't give up the light so I could see perfectly fine. They weren't fighting, it was a normal conversation. They were too quiet to make out what they were saying. The woman would comment on something, and the tone in the man's voice would either accept or reject it. The next time I looked up it was morning.

My mom started asking me strange questions, like "Have you been talking to strangers?" or "Are you doing ok in school?" and "Have you been lying to me lately?" I just replied with "No, yes and no." She gave me anxious stares. I guess she noticed my change in attitude. I guess I was becoming a quiet ten year old, too calm for anyone to think my personality should be for the age nine to ten.

Then, at a certain point it became bad. Frightening. I always wondered if you took the 10 year old I was then and put me back in that nitemare I had when I was nine, maybe I would have dealt with that better. But visible rib cages and half faces? That's too much for a kid. I could watch scary movies and laugh. "That won't happen to you, but it sure can happen to me!"

I came home from school one day, and instead of finding my mother sitting at a table, I found an old woman with white hair and sunken in eyeballs. I eyed her wrinkles and her creased lips. I wouldn't want to see her teeth.

She talked to me in a hoarse, deep voice for a woman. "Your very lucky you know, most people can't see anything." I stood there looking at her as if my dog was talking. "But I warn you, you don't always have control." I opened my mouth, but I couldn't say anything. She moved her head towards the window and gave it a blank stare, then she turned towards me and also gave me a blank stare, as if she could see through me.

"This is how we're looked at." she told me. "This is how invisible we are." She put her eyes back in focus with mine. "This is how you look at us, eye contact is the key." It took me a little while to understand what she was talking about. "I hope you realize we're all dead."

"NO!" I scream at the old woman, "WHY?! Why won't you leave me alone?! I can't do anything!" She stared the way someone very old and wise would stare at the young, knowing more than what the young knew. I knew it too, but I deny it. "GO AWAY! Just all of you GO AWAY!" She then smiled a cruel smile. "That is what you have control over." and then she was gone.

That was the end, I thought that was where it would stop. But after I said those words my mom caught me, coming downstairs from the shower. She had that "this is the last stand" look on her face.

"WE'RE MOVING." she stated in a clear official voice. Maybe that's the end.

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Not the end. Theres my first chapter, I'll write when I have time and inspiration...I hope I get some reviews. Please tell me what you think and ignore any typos...I didn't really go over it...

Caila